subject: Hilot: Ancient Knowledge For Modern Days [print this page] Kali Majapahit is not only about fightingKali Majapahit is not only about fighting. Hilot (Health and Healing arts) is also part of our program. It"s true that most students start only for the physical system, but soon, they all realize that health and personal development are a huge part of Life, therefore, a huge part of our teaching"
Hilot is a word from the Tagalog dialect meaning "massage therapy" or "Healer"; it is the ancient Filipino art of natural healing which employs massage, acupressure, Chiropractic / Osteopathic manipulation and dietetic for the diagnosis and treatment of physical, emotional and Energy problems.
I believe the philosophy developed in our schools will help the student to question himself about health, sickness, their causes and their origins. In Asia, it is believed that nothing "just happen"; everything is the result of a decision, a thought, an action... even health. Health is often the result of consciousness and lifestyle... how well we take care of our vehicle.
Hilot is a complete natural therapy, based principally on prevention. It has several disciplines, all being complementary or independent, depending on the needs:
- Massage
- Body Alignment (Osteopathy)
- Body coordination and Sinawali exercises
- Energy work (acupressure, Breathing techniques, visualization)
- Dietetic and detoxification
Hilot massage is a very efficient therapy. It increases articulations mobility and flexibility, takes care of the muscular and emotional "knots", boost up the energy of internal organs, makes the energy (Qi), blood, lymph and toxins flow inside or outside the body, and helps the healing of the emotional problems and past traumas.
Our Hilot program is my own interpretation of the Filipino Hilot (we should say Hilots, since there are as many healing arts as there are healers), and has been influenced by Filipino Hilot massage and bone setting, TCM (Chinese Medicine), Thai massage, Western Osteopathy and Chiropractic, several schools of dietetic and nutrition, psychotherapy and sports physiotherapy.
Kali Majapahit offers a complete program teaching together Filipino Martial and Healing Arts. The instructors are therefore specialized in FMA, stress management, dietetic, posture correction, spine alignment, etc. This "health knowledge" is taught to our students through tips we regularly give our students in Kali class, or through Hilot seminars that take place in our Singapore school, once to twice a year.
a) Stress management:
Stress management is determined by 2 main Arts: the art of breathing, and the art of positive thinking while facing difficult events. The way we breathe is critical! The deeper one breathes the better for cleansing our physical as well as emotional spheres. As for positive thinking, the best way to understand it is to realized that our happiness or unhappiness is not determined by the events in our lives, but by the way we CHOOSE to react to those events" And if there nothing we can do about the first one, we can completely master the second!
b) Dietetic:
It is also very important to focus on our Acid/Alkaline balance (the Ph of our blood). Nowadays, because of our everyday life"s stress and our junk food habits, the balance that should exist in our body between acid and alkaline substances is broken; our blood Ph becomes more and more acid.
The acidification of the blood causes lots of troubles and health problems that most people try to ignore. As an example, when our body is too acid, we put on wait and have terrible time loosing it; the acidity of the blood burns the internal organs, so the body"s only defense is to retain fat to protect the organs again over acidity. We then enter a vicious circle where no matter what diet and what kind of physical exercise, we will NOT LOSE FAT.
Aliments can be divided in two groups: acid and alkaline. Our body needs the two types of food, but one should eat more alkaline food than acid. Note that the taste is not always a good clue to know how acid an aliment is. For example, lemon taste acid, but once digested has alkaline residues. Chocolate tastes sweet, but has acid residues, so it is considered acid.
c) Posture correction:
The posture of a person tells us a great deal about his state of health, his psychological state, as well as about the traumas of his childhood.
It is not my purpose to provide here a class of body mechanics or osteopathy, but only to give some advices I think are fundamental to integrate in one"s daily life, as well as in the practice of a physical activity like martial arts.
- The 10 toes must touch the ground (this is not always the case with Westerners, due to shoes, worn from the first months of life). It is easy to correct them, by walking bare feet as frequently as possible and distributing the weight of the body (its mass) between the 10 toes, the bowl of the foot and the heel. A bad bone position of the feet inexorably entails abnormal ligament tractions, provoking compensations, modification of the balance, joints and muscular weaknesses, torsions and pinches to the spine and inter-vertebral discs, compression of the nerve endings, etc.
It is necessary to visualize out two feet as being two triangles whose bases would be the toes and the summits the two heels. The three points of each triangle (the big toe, the little toe and the heel) must be touching the ground to be in balance. If one of the three is not, the balance is broken.
- The knees and the toes must go in the same direction. It is necessary to avoid locking them, and to have flexible thighs not to drag the kneecap and the patellar tendon upwards. It is good, while standing, to bend the legs just a little in order not to put too much pressure on the knees.
- The spine has to be straight, respecting its natural curves without exaggerating them.
- Pull the top of the skull upwards and bring the chin slightly in, in order to reduce the cervical hollow and thus align the head.
